How could an idiomatic design of Serializable/Cloneable/… look like in Scala?

Question

I wonder how much different these funcionality would look like (and how different the implementation would be), if Scala wouldn\'t (have to) follow Java\'s java.io.Seriali

Answer 1

Serialization and cloning are both kind of special because of mutability:

• Serialization, because it has to deal with cycles in the object graph, and;
• Cloning because... Well, the only reason to clone an object is to prevent the accidental spread of mutable state.

So, if you're willing to commit to a completely immutable domain model, you don't have object graphs as such anymore, you have object trees instead.

For a functionally-oriented approach to serialization, SBinary is what I'd probably try first. For cloning, Just Don't Do It. :)